Washington Metro News

Washington Metro News

Sidwell Friends is one of the nation’s top schools. Students come from Washington’s most prominent families, and the school provides a positive environment that expects the best from its students. The campus could be mistaken for stately Wayne Manor.

As Bill McGurn noted in The Wall Street Journal, two of its students, Sarah and James Parker, enjoy going to Sidwell Friends. They’ve made friends there and are excelling in their studies. It’s a world away from the public school they would otherwise attend — where test scores are well below the national average and barely half of students graduate. The schools themselves are unsafe, with metal-detector checks a part of the average day.

Since the drubbing the GOP received in the November elections, all we've been told by the media and "Washington insiders" is that the Republican Party is dead, Reaganism is dead, conservatism is dead, there is no leadership on the right, GOP... put a fork in it.

CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, last week proved those pronouncements to be dead wrong.

In Tuesday’s edition of The Hill, Jim Mills called the District of Columbia’s lack of federal representation despite being subject to federal taxation a travesty and outrage, bringing to mind the quote from Woody Allen’s “Bananas,” of “a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”

As Mills noted, the legislation moving forward in the House and Senate is clearly unconstitutional. Federal representation for District residents requires changing the Constitution. Ratifying a constitutional amendment on the issue is unlikely; it’s simply not in any state’s interest to willingly diminish its own power.

In what will undoubtedly go down in history as the stupidest and most dangerous move by the D.C. City Council, bars in the nation’s capital will extend "last call" from 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. during the Obama inauguration.

Why now? Why for this president-elect? Likely the dollar signs in the eyes of owners of local watering holes have pushed the lawmakers over the edge into this area of irresponsibility. The likelihood of alcohol-related injuries and deaths will skyrocket, arrests for public drunkenness and disorderliness will increase, and the potential for tragedy to mar Barack Obama's celebration will be heightened.

Back in February in this space, I talked about our new D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee, calling her tough and talking about the steep hill she has to climb in her effort to reform the District's public schools under Mayor Adrian Fenty (D).

It’s seven months later, and Michelle Rhee is swinging for the fences, working her heart out to bring new energy into the city's public education system, wrecked by years of indifference and inaction by the Teachers Union. She's turning the system on its heels, and, so far, working to create real change.

Many D.C. residents are breathing a sigh of relief now that the U.S. Supreme Court has struck down the city’s longstanding handgun ban. Finally, we are free to protect ourselves from the tyranny of crime!!!

Some of us can’t wait to begin the process of taking our homes back from the thugs and murderers who terrorized the city for years without repudiation. However, D.C.’s proposed regulations, while allowing residents to keep registered handguns in their homes, nonetheless contain restrictions that will keep them from using them for their intended purpose.

Incredibly, the regulations stipulate that the guns have to be kept disassembled and unloaded when not being used. What is the point of having a gun for self-protection when you’ll already be dead and gone by the time you get a chance to use it in self-defense?

Many people have come out in anger against the death in police custody of cop-killer Ronnie White, citing a violation of his civil liberties.

But few have spoken up for the family of Cpl. Richard Findley, who died in the line of duty while trying to protect the public against a murderous car thief. I am sick and tired of people coddling criminals who have no regard for the lives of law-abiding citizens.

The truth of the matter is that White committed a horrible crime that incited the justifiable rage of the slain officer's grief-stricken comrades. I am an uncompromising advocate of law enforcement officers adhering to the rule of law and under no circumstances should they become the judge, jury and executioner of these gun-toting thugs. However, one can certainly understand the frustration and rage of officers who put their lives on the line to protect the public.